How Technology Can Improve Your Fitness

We use technology for a variety of tasks in our daily lives. We use our phones to send and receive important emails, we keep in touch with friends and family via social media, search the internet for how-to demonstrations or answers, and keep up with the latest news.

Some people, however, do not realize that most phones now come with pre-installed health apps that track your everyday fitness. Even if your phone doesn’t come with a health app pre-installed, you can still download one from the App or Google Play stores. These apps are actually very handy and can really help you improve your fitness habits.

Health apps track the number of steps you take per day. It is recommended that you take an average of 6,000 – 10,000 steps per day but most people average only around 3,000. By taking advantage of a health app, you can see what your average steps per day are and work to improve how much walking you do. This helps you track your progress and you can more easily reach your daily step target when you can physically see the results on your phone screen.

Some health apps can go more in depth. You can enter more specific information like your height, weight, and diet into them and they will make exercise and nutritional recommendations for you based on this information. This allows for a more personalized health and/or activity plan.

There are also some other in depth options for people who really enjoy working out or want to start working out more. These apps can track your running time as well as your walking time. So, if you walk for 20 minutes and then run for 10 minutes, the app will record this and be able to tell you your distance for each activity. You can track how far you jogged one evening and strive to go farther the next. The app will say something along the lines of “You ran 1.5 miles, great job!” so the next evening you may try to hit 2 miles. Besides steps taken and distance traveled, health apps also have the capability of tracking your heart rate and monitoring changes during strenuous activities. This is especially helpful if you happen to suffer from a medical condition that can affect your heart rate.

Overall it can be very beneficial to use your phone to track your daily and weekly fitness. There’s no guessing involved as hard numbers are available immediately to you. Use a health app to motivate yourself to go farther and do more than you normally would, and enjoy seeing the fruits of your progress by comparing what you had previously done to what you can now do. Having a goal oriented plan in front of you will help you see results. These apps can help you improve your fitness levels, your diet, your weight, confidence, and your life in general.